To understand what Betsy DeVos brings with her to Washington, you need to understand the fight we’ve been having in Michigan over school “choice” developed explicitly to cause local public schools to bleed out.

The legal and institutional context is different (and unusual) in Michigan, but this article helps lay out how DeVos and her allies helped both to construct that context and then enact laws which used that context to injure local public districts, undercut public faith in local public schools, and turn that into a downward spiral.

The fight here is quite literally over the continued existence of community-governed public education. THIS is the agenda Mrs DeVos and her allies have brought to the nation’s capitol. And they are willing to play a very long game.